Category: halloween

Happy long weekend people… hope it was enjoyable for you. We had a great time, and made sure to temper any “word” with plenty of do-nothing relaxation. Looking forward to another short week now, leaving early Friday morning for Taiwan. I’m excited, although I haven’t really prepared for the presentation I’m giving… I guess it’ll be another last-minute cram thing – at least I’m used to it. Bring it on.

Gold mining this weekend was a bust, but a fun bust. Camping was awesome, the weather was great and there weren’t many others out there so we had some privacy. I think everyone enjoyed themselves. There’s a certain draw to car-camping… being able to throw all the amenities in the truck and drive right to your spot. We had the big tent, the air mattress, camp-chairs, soap, etc. You get the good food, the coolers full of beer, all the luxuries of home. I brought my pipe, wore my ridiculous (but dearly beloved) crushable felt cowboy hat, and spat sunflowers seeds while dozing under the sun. As for the mining, after some trial and error, the pump and motor worked perfectly – pumping large volumes of water. I, however, had chosen to leave my grandfather’s true sluice at home, since it was nearly 30ft long and somewhat cumbersome being made of heavy tin. I opted, instead, to bring a small plastic store-bought sluice which I knew would likely be too small for the volume of water moved by the pump. I was right as, even on the lowest throttle setting, there was too much water on the sluice, and it washed away everything you dumped on the sluice. For the sluice I brought, we’d have been better off just bucketing the water ourselves. So, although Pat and I were particularly happy with the pump assembly working, in the end we resorted to simply panning on the shore. Panning is fun, it’s got the same sort of tranquil attraction that fishing does. If we decide to do it again, I’ll bring the full sluice and set it up right… it’s a big operation. For some action-shots with the equipment, you can browse through Ben’s gallery.

What do you guys think about Kanye’s little ad-lib on the NBC benefit show for Katrina victims? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can watch it here. Watching the video, it looks to me like Kanye had likely thought about what he wanted to say before he got up there, but his nervousness in actually going through with it was evident. It looked to me like he was fumbling at first, seemingly forcing out the words. After he got rolling and picked up a little steam, he was fine (although it still wasn’t the most polished speech). The plainfaced delivery of “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” was pretty stinging. For me, simplifying the situation to black vs. white is shortsighted and dangerous – I’d say it’s more poor vs. rich; an issue of class, not race. If you order an evacuation of a city, it somewhat stands to reason that that city’s poorer and less fortunate will likely be the least able to leave. With perhaps no money to travel or stay somewhere else, and perhaps nowhere else to go – it’s conceivable that those who struggle with poverty would simply not have the ways or means to get out of harm’s way. I suppose any administration would expect a good deal of criticisms in the aftermath of a national disaster – some of which may be legitimate gripes, others just using the situation to their advantage. Just seems to me that this country should have some sort of infrastructure in place to be able to respond to worst-case situations like this. Whatever; I could be wrong, too.

Installed the latest Gallery2 release candidate last night, and am very pleased. The install process is 100 times better and easier than the previous 1.x versions. The administrative features look simplified and more organized too – and things just seem to “work” more than they did in the previous versions. Now that things are chugging nicely, and the program isn’t so tough to use and optimize – I’m hoping to utilize it for all my upcoming photo uploads. I gave up using the 1.x versions because there was just so much heavy lifting involved. Oh, the old version worked, and looked pretty dang slick, but I didn’t have the patience to take the time and put in the effort to use it right. So, I gave up posting images to the web really… just didn’t do it. We’ll see what happens.

Fall is in the air folks, it really is. Did I say that already? I know it because, today, I bought the first ingredients in the makings for Halloween 2005. Oh man, I’m pumped. Unlike last year, there are no major new purchases, really, just some more black lights (you can never have enough black lights). Like last year, there will be a new “major” prop addition – this year’s being a variation on this theme. (I plan on modding some of the setup, maybe making a different looking coffin.) Ahhh… Halloween… Wal Mart has its candy aisle up already, and the Halloween store is moving into the outlet mall this week. I took a look at my three-year-old gravestones and graveyard fence today, and decided it’s time to make a new fence and touch up the old tombstones as well as fab some brand new ones. Now I just have to get off my butt and actually do some stuff.

‘Night.

Good evening my friends. Welcome to the leavings of a fine weekend, the makings of which you can read about in more detail below. For now though, lets get right down to the goods – before this dull-ache in the back of my head turns into full-on sleepiness and I can no longer resist the calling of the sheets. So… we go…

Written late Friday night, never made it:

Well, lest you were wondering, I pulled it off. I don’t know how I manage sometimes… I swear I’m just lucky by nature – things just tend to go right for me. If you haven’t been reading lately, I’m referring to a formal content review I had this evening some presentation material I’ll be giving at a conference later this month. Anyway, the review went stellar – better than I could’ve hoped. There was no way my material was at the requisite 95% completion, but I prefaced my review with that fact and cited special circumstances (you may call it “an excuse”) as to why that was. In the end, I actually got some accolades for having as much depth as I did under the conditions I’m working with – see, I’m just plain lucky… Oh, and as a sideline, I think this is the longest-running work-related topic I’ve ever written about. For the most part I tend to keep my work-related blogging abstract, talking more about how I work than what I’m working on. So, this running topic of my presentation crunch has effectively charting new territory for me.

And now, I’m writing a sentence here and there in between another midnight-oil evening slaving over PowerPoint and Outlook. Yes yes, work is still all consuming. However, just up ahead in the near future I spy what may possibly be a small respite from the crunch. Not tonight, however, where I’m under the gun to produce two very tangible (and very non-existent, at this point) pieces of output. So, I work till I get tired of it, then write till I get tired of that, and just keep switching. We’ll see how long this lasts, it’s already 10:30pm as it is. OK, enough about work… for real.

Sunday night now, welcome to the present.

What a weekend. Gorgeous weather, productive days. Saturday, Erik called and motivated me to work out in the backyard. We made some awesome progress, clear-cutting the forest of weeds that the winter rains gave birth to, and firing up the saw to cut pavers for the porch. Being able to see the ground through the weeds makes the yard show so much more promise… it just looks yard-like again. Sunday, Sharaun helped me cut and place the final pavers for the porch. Yup, you heard right – the porch is d-o-n-e done. And suddenly, things seem so much more measurable. I’ve probably said it at the end of each distinct phase of work, but I can count the steps to “done” so much better now: adjust the sprinklers to height, remove rocks and debris, fill/grade with topsoil, and bring in sod. Once the sod is in, it’s all “prettying” from then on. Time for plants, flowers, finishing touches, etc. I dunno… I remember saying I’d be done by last Halloween… perhaps I’ll only be a year off my prediction.

Anyway, these two days of not-working were even sweeter for the work-bonanza that was my last week. 8am to 1 or 2am each night really took a toll on me – and come Friday at 4pm I was more than ready for an outdoor happy hour at the local watering hole. My Thursday-night-to-Friday was a blur of presentation-writing and presentation-giving… all of which I miraculously pulled off to my satisfaction. This week shouldn’t be as insane, but I still have to maintain a fairly good clip if I want to be prepared for the major presentation in a week’s time. The ratio I’m shooting for this week is about 40% content development and 60% rehearsal. I want to make darn sure I have my patter down before I get up in front of that roomful of inquisitive folks. Ugh…

On on off note, I was perusing Pat’s page the other day and came across an interesting comment to one of his front-page updates (you can check it out here). A fella whom neither I, nor Pat I presume, has ever met left a comment on his site, mentioning he’d been brought there from some link at my site, which he’d originally landed on while researching Pac Man stuff. Unknown readers: the blogger’s Holy Grail. Seeing stuff like that, and WHOISing unfamiliar IPs to see if you might have a lurking regular with whom you’re unfamiliar… it all somehow validates the time spent writing. So thanks to you, lurkers, you make it worth it. Oh, and you too, known readers. You all rock.

Now, I’m going to bed. No, I don’t care what you do… I said I’m going to bed. Goodnight.

Again, an entry that spans a couple of days and makes no excuses for non-linearity. It’s Thursday now in Taipei, and it’s oppressively hot and humid. I must admit though, I’ve been faring better than usual considering the heat. I think I’ve developed some kind of mental kung-fu that protects me from the heat. I still loathe going outdoors, but when I do go outside, and even if I’m walking around the city, I use my mind-control to keep my usually open-floodgate style sweating to a minimum.

I don’t know why, but since coming to Taiwan this time I’ve been indulging in a cigarette or two each night. Sometimes this happens to me: I set the precedent one evening by breaking down a borrowing a smoke. Then, once people know I’m willing – they just won’t stop offering. I’ve got to stop though, because I am just not made for smoking. I mean, it kills me. This morning I woke up with a dreadfully sore throat, and that kicked-in-the-chest feeling. I don’t think it’s the smoking itself, rather the havoc it wreaks on my sinuses. My sinuses are all allergy’d up anyway, and smoking just makes things much worse. I wake up all stuffed up and horking up gobs of brown goo… almost like a headcold, but completely brought about by the Marlboro man. I tried to make a stand last night, because I had already been feeling the cumulative effects of the past few days – but some Taiwanese cab driver insisted I pony up and take a fag. After that, he was passing out the betel nut and it was a regular working-class party in the taxi. Come to think of it, that guy was fun. But no, I’m done, you heard it from the source – no more cigarettes.

Every time I come to Taipei, I test the limits of what I dare to eat. I don’t necessarily mean what actually comprises the meal, rather where the meal comes from. On this trip, I decided to finally throw caution to the wind and have some food from the street-vendors. The night markets are full of stainless-steel carts on wheels, behind which sweaty, unclean-looking men wearing A-frame t-shirts and smoking cigarettes that dangle dangerously long columns of ash as they stir their boiling pots or tend to hot skillets. The fare is varied: some kind of “tendon” soup, so-called “stinky” tofu, various parts of ducks, squids on sticks, sugared tomatoes with prawn-centers on a stick, you get the picture. Not all of it is unappealing though, I just like the shock value of mentioning only the oddball local stuff. Anyway, I’ve dined at a couple carts so far during this trip. I had duck wing, I had some kind of dessert made from shaved ice, gelatinous milk, and tapioca, and I returned to a donut vendor that Eric intro’d me to last time I was in town. I guess it’s a pretty “safe” list, but the point is that I haven’t gotten sick yet. There were a couple guys in the office today who opted to walk to McDonalds rather than join the rest of us folks for dumplings at the place down the road. Tsk tsk, where’s your sense of adventure?

The past couple days I’ve been catching myself trying to imagine this city from Sharaun’s point of view. Watching the scooters swoop in and out of traffic like a reckless swarm of insects; noticing the familiar sights like 7-11, Circle-K, and Hooters; feeling alone because no one understands you and likewise you can’t understand them. I’ve been desensitized to it, but it’ll all be new for her. I don’t know why I’m so excited about being able to see that, to watch her reaction to things. I guess it’s partly because I feel like the all-knowing old hand at Taipei. Even tho I’m as green as any other American who’s been to the city a few times and thinks they get it. I actually can’t wait until she gets here, so much to show her.

I’m in the office now, got here around 8:30am. The 4am meeting bit went over much easier than I thought it would, it doesn’t seem to have wrecked my sleeping – and I think I’m just about adjusted to the new timezone. I still want to sleep during the day, but that’s on par with my normal level of lazy so I’m not too concerned. Somehow, I forgot to bring some headphones for the laptop, so I can’t listen to any of the new stuff I’ve downloaded. Instead, I’m sitting here listening to tunes off my phone. Which is fine, really, but I think I’ll pick up a pair of headphones at the computer market. I have a hard time getting motivated to do day-to-day work when I’m here. I think it has something to do with being out of my element. Not sitting at my desk with my monitor and such. Working off the laptop screen with no external mouse and keyboard, I dunno. Just that feeling of not quite being where I usually am. I have to get totally absorbed in what I’m doing to be productive, which is sometimes hard to do.

Last night, as I tried to go back to sleep around 5am, I suddenly and randomly got an idea for what I want to do as my centerpiece prop this Halloween. For the last year I’d been thinking that I’d work on the witch again, making her actually fly around the yard this year – but I still see a lot of work in that one. The idea that came to me is relatively simple, which is good considering the success of the complicated witch implementation originally planned for last year, but I think the effect will be cool. I want to build a life-size coffin out of wood, stained to look nice and real, which will be propped up somewhere along the path to the front door. The lid will be able to open slightly, opening to show an eerie light and fog rolling out. While open, an arm will reach out toward the visitors, and then retreat back into the coffin, which will then close again. I think it’ll be pretty easy: some wood, a couple windshield wiper motors, an el-cheapo fog machine from Wal Mart, some lights and the prop for the arm.

Finally, I see PF is hip to the Ponys. Good call PF, good call.

Until tomorrow, smoke-free.

Noon. A garlic-flavored mouth from the leftovers I just ate. I’m in one of those perfectly comfortable moods, where all the environmental factors are just right. Full belly, rested mind, nice temperature, clean skin, all things combined to make me feel just right… porridge ain’t too hot, bed’s just the right size.

Tomorrow (today, in blog-land) is Thanksgiving, and, much to my chagrin, we will not be spending the day in the way I’d ideally spend it. I love Thanksgiving because it’s unabashedly lazy, it revels in laziness. You wake up early, eat early, take a nap, eat dessert… and later on hit the leftovers for second round. Most of the day is spent with family, either around the table, watching football, or nodding off wherever is comfortable. But no, not us, not this Thanksgiving. We’re leaving almost right after the meal to drive two hours north to visit friends. As much as I want to see these friends, I really wish we could’ve found a better time/day to do it. I’m not at all looking forward to the drive or the unaccustomed “rush” of what is normally one of the more decadently loafish holidays. Whatever, at least we’re on vacation.

Fast-forward – Thanksgiving. What a unique holiday. I mean, in gradeschool you learn about the feast shared by the pilgrims and indians, the crop’s bounty and God’s grace and whatnot. So as you get older I guess it turns more into something about “what you’re thankful for.” I still like to think about the pilgrims and crap, mostly because I just like that old-timey stuff. But, I guess it is worth something to sit and reflect on the things you have and should be thankful for. Take for instance our drive to Jacksonville right now, we just passed an huge billboard on the road that said “Thank Jesus for Governor Jeb Bush and President George Bush.” Honest. A whole billboard. So in the spirit of advertising what we’re thankful for, I’ll give it a go.

I’m thankful for a sense of humor. I’m thankful for friends. I’m thankful for family. For money. For my wife. For fresh air and warm sun and blue sky. For good music played loud. For naps. For the ability to rewind and pause live TV. For my job, which is pretty much the same thing as money… it’s a means to an end. For free time. For cholesterol medicine. For baby powder. For flip-flops. For free MP3s. For time alone. For time alone with my wife. For wordy fantasy novels and my pipe. For Halloween and Christmas, you can have Flag Day. For soldiers and sailors and pilots and a superior military. For close mountains. For simple things. For sarcasm. For dandruff shampoo and contact lenses. For cold weather and clouds and rain and days inside. For ten fingers and ten toes and all five senses.

Oh, and if you think I made up that “thank Jesus for Bush” billboard as a nice segue into the meat-paragraph… you’re wrong, it was real. In fact, a few miles before that we pass one that read “Evolution: A fairy tale… for adults,” and pointed curious passers-by to www.godisthecreator.com, or something like that. Religion in the south is an awesome thing, a powerful thing, a completely ingrained thing. It’s fascinating, and somehow welcoming or comforting. Errybody here got the Spirit y’all, errybody got the Lord in they heart – and it’s kinda nice.

Happy Thanksgiving all. Dave out.

The other day, driving to work, I saw some kids on their way to high-school. Windows down, rap music blaring, and smoke billowing out both sides of the car. We were stopped in traffic at the time, and the passenger chose this is as the right moment to clear the cashed bowl they had been puffing on. He craned his head out the window, put his mouth to the ceramic pipe, and blew out the ash. Man, we were never that brazen… smoke weed before school? Nope. After school, sure; in the car, sure. It was just funny, he looked right at me (as I was right beside them in traffic) as he cleared the bowl… not a care in the world. I shoulda got the plates and narc’d on ’em, but nah… I lived in that world once… maybe not quite as extreme… but still. Intro paragraph over.

Friday night (Saturday morning, whatever), moderately drunk – so much so that my fingers are stubborn on the keyboard. Not wanting to stretch to the right letters, skipping words in hopes my brain won’t notice. Seriously, if you could see the type-to-backspace ratio for that last sentence, you’d know what I’m talking about. The 90 Day Men are playing in Winamp… I hated them at first, mocked the singer’s “singing,” but now I love them – the music is amazing, the tone is something altogether new and interesting. Get the album, even if you hate it – you’ll be better for it. Anyway, the night started off at the new brewery/restaurant here in town. Two-hour wait for dinner, all two hours of which was spent sampling beer. Dinner, more beer. Afterward, the crew reassembles at my place to take care of the leftover leftovers from last weekend’s Halloween bash. Everyone leaves and it’s 1am, and I decide to drink some water and write. I’m not staying up much longer, my fingers are lazy like they’re waking-up cold and have gone long unused – and my mind is muddled with beer. Just long enough to put this 90 Day Men album on my MSI flash MP3 player – then I hit the sack with the album in my ears. In fact, this is it; I am done; goodnight until I pick up this entry again, no doubt on Sunday night.

Saturday morning, and the day started out ambitious enough. Slept in late and then decided to hit the backyard and finish cutting stones for the porch. Put on the work-clothes and fired up the saw, cut three bricks and placed them, pushed the trigger on the saw for the next batch of bricks – and nothing. Checked the outlet, checked the breaker – nothing. Owell, I figure it was the yard’s way of telling me that I wasn’t meant to work today. Instead, I was meant to sit here, on the couch, watching old episodes of the Twilight Zone and working on webpages. I’ve decided I’ll heed the signs, and do my best to do nothing.

Oh man, I went a little crazy with Sharaun gone and smoked my pipe in the house all day. Then I came in the house yesterday after a nice dinner at Erik and Kristi’s, only to realize that the place reeked of stale pipe tobacco. Slept last night with all the windows open and the fans on, in an attempt to air the place out. And as a final precaution this morning before heading out to pick her up at the airport, hit the place with some air freshener and Febreze. I musta done a good job, ’cause she didn’t say anything when she walked in the door. I even tried some crafty pre-excuse about the cat taking an exceptionally pungent dump or something. Ahh… freedom… to smoke my pipe on the couch, to eat spaghetti two nights in a row, to have a floor free of cast-off clothes and junk. I’m glad my wife’s back.

So, to recap: go get the 90 Day Men album, and while you’re there pick up the Go! Team album. Then, when your friends hear songs on the OC and latest WB shows that they remember hearing in your car months earlier – there will be no recourse but for them to acknowledge your psychic taste in music. Dave out.

Another Monday y’allz. The time changed, so when I saw how much sun was coming through the blinds when the alarm went off – I was confused. And now it’s dark as I leave work, which is horribly depressing to me for some reason. When am I supposed to mow the lawn, at lunch or something? Oh, the weekend? Really? OK, if you say so.

Took down all the Halloween hoopla today, some at lunch and some after work (before the sun failed). I like getting it down right away, makes me feel some kinda “vigilant” about not overstaying some kind of holiday decoration welcome, y’know upholding that 50’s neighborhood vibe I tend to labor under, delusional. After taking down the witch, ghost, and tombstones, we headed over to Anthony’s for some dinner (communal meals are popular in the crowd we run with), and some Land of the Lost watching. Man those DVDs were a great purchase… solid cheese man. Greenscreen and stop-motion clay dinosaurs, the pinnacle of 1974 Saturday morning kids programming. Awesome sci-fi plots and horrible, terrible acting make the show irresistible. I love it.

Sharaun’s leaving me mid-week to head to Florida for a weekend wedding. That makes me a bachelor for the weekend, it also leaves me with a clean house for a few days. There’s some things I like about having the house to myself, like the “hermity” feeling I can bring on by shutting locking the doors and huddling in the corner of the couch. Purposely not answering the phone, cooking my own food, doing what I want. Not that I can’t do all that with Sharaun around – but the solitude enhances the feeling. I like that.

I’ve been telling my brother and a buddy that I’d make them some CDs for a month now, so tonight I sat down and composed the list of albums I actually wanna send to them. Some are new, some are not-so-new, but the common theme is that I think they’re good tunes they’ll enjoy. There’ll be some picks from this year’s “top ten,” which is pretty firm in my mind already, barring some last-minute contender. Right now I’ve got about twelve CDs I’ll be sending out, and, in true mix-tape style, I’ll include a paragraph about each one stating why I do, and the intended listener should, dig it. Oh, they’ll be some good stuff on… some obvious and some sleepers.

Listening to the new Death Cab and Bright Eyes tracks from the Daniel Johnston cover album – good stuff. I think that’s all she wrote tonight folks. Oh, and to everyone out there, get out and vote! Watch Democracy happen, live. Dave out.

Great weekend, and I’m pretty beat tonight. For that reason, I ‘m not really going to type much. Today was party clean-up day – sweeping, mopping, steam-cleaning, and the like. The house didn’t take too bad of a beating, which was good.

The party was great, even though we polished off an entire keg of Newcastle in just about three hours (fastest keg-floating I think I’ve ever seen). If you wanna see how it all went down, Suzy’s got some pictures on her site, and I’ve posted a hodge-podge of stuff too. In addition to that, make sure to cast your vote over at the official post-party costume contest voting page.

Tonight, Halloween, I fired up both fog machines, put on some creepy music, and handed out candy to the trick-or-treaters. We got about twice the kids we had last year, which still isn’t that many, but at least it made it all a little more worthwhile. Tomorrow it all comes down and I mow the lawn, back to normalcy.

I told you I wasn’t going to write a lot. The pictures should suffice. Dave out.